Since Forbes hired me in 1995 to write a legal column, I’ve taken advantage of the great freedom the magazine grants its staff, to pursue stories about everything from books to billionaires. I’ve chased South Africa’s first black billionaire through a Cape Town shopping mall while admirers flocked around him, climbed inside the hidden chamber in the home of an antiquarian arms and armor dealer atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, and sipped Chateau Latour with one of Picasso’s grandsons in the Venice art museum of French tycoon François Pinault. I’ve edited the magazine’s Lifestyle section and opinion pieces by the likes of John Bogle and Gordon Bethune. As deputy leadership editor, these days I mostly write about careers and corporate social responsibility. I got my job at Forbes through a brilliant libertarian economist, Susan Lee, whom I used to put on television at MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Before that I covered law and lawyers for journalistic stickler, harsh taskmaster and the best teacher a young reporter could have had, Steven Brill.

Did Greg Smith Commit Career Suicide?

Career coaches say it was a mistake for Greg Smith to publicly criticize his boss, Lloyd Blankfein.

When Greg Smith decided to write a scathing op ed piece that ran in the New York Times yesterday, blasting his employer, Goldman Sachs, for sacrificing its clients’ best interest in favor of maximum profits, he violated a cardinal rule of career advancement: Do not bad-mouth your former employer. Career coaches and executive recruiters who have worked with finance professionals agree that making such a public statement foils any chances Smith, 33, might have had of working on Wall Street.

Roy Cohen, a New York career coach who worked as a regular outplacement consultant for Goldman Sachs from 1990-2004, says that Smith’s Times piece “raises questions about this fellow’s integrity and loyalty.” An even bigger issue, says Cohen: When Smith detailed how Goldman employees “callously … talk about ripping their clients off,” he put the livelihoods of the 30,000 people employed by the firm at risk. Goldman’s stock dropped 3.4% yesterday after the op ed appeared, though shares have been recovering some of their losses today. Employers will be wary of hiring someone who would intentionally cause such damage. According to a Timesstory today, Smith sent an email resignation to his bosses at 6:40 a.m. London time yesterday, 15 minutes before the op ed appeared.

Further, says Cohen, potential employers will be turned off by the fact that Smith seems to have inflated his role at the firm. The Times called him “executive director” in its author description, when it turns out he was a vice president. According to Cohen, after 12 years at Goldman, Smith should have at least advanced to managing director. Getting stuck in the vice president position means “something must have broken down” for Smith inside the firm, says Cohen. In a memo to employees yesterday, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein and President Gary Cohn, whom Smith criticized in his piece, clarified that Smith was a vice president, not a director.

By holding himself out as superior to, and more ethical than, the firm where he worked, could Smith’s op ed be read as a job advertisement for himself? Not in finance, say recruiters and coaches. Cohen says that the kind of disillusionment with ethical standards that Smith expressed is common on Wall Street, but that it was “naïve” for Smith to blame his employers for his personal feelings. “It’s a problem in every financial institution,” says Cohen. Wise employees keep their sentiments to themselves, he says, and resign if they are unhappy.

Jesse Marrus, a former financial executive recruiter who now runs the finance jobs website StreetID.com, sees a slim chance that Smith could be picked up by a small hedge fund. But on the other hand, he says, “I don’t see anyone wanting to be associated with someone who has muddied the waters.”

New York career coach Eileen Wolkstein, who has worked with many clients in finance, says she doesn’t think Smith’s career is completely over, though she agrees that he won’t get a job in finance, or any job until the furor over his op ed dies down. Then he should tap into the network at his alma mater, Stanford. “Are there buddies who could use his expertise in a start-up?” she says. “Sure.” Marrus guesses that Smith could get a job in green energy or another industry several steps removed from Wall Street.

Those may be possibilities, says Dale Winston of headhunting firm Amrop Battalia Winston, but the fact remains that Smith aired his employer’s dirty laundry in the most public of forums, which would make any company wary. “He should have vented to his friends and colleagues and resigned gracefully,” says Winston.

Smith has not spoken to the media since his piece ran. Requests for comment sent from Forbes to his Facebook account have gone unreturned. This morning the Timesquoted a friend who attended Stanford with Smith, Miami lawyer Daniel Lipkin, as saying Smith “sounded confident and felt good about his decision to go public,” after the article appeared. The Times also says Smith had a sheet listing Goldman’s business principles taped to the wall next to his computer in London. “He has a really high moral fiber and really cared about the culture of the firm,” Lipkin told the Times.

Cohen, author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide, speculates that Smith is in fact angling for some kind of writing deal. “I’m envisioning that he’s going to get a huge, huge book contract,” says Cohen. “There’s nothing people like to read about more than Goldman, Sachs.”

Wolkstein sees one other career option for Smith. “He could become head of Occupy Wall Street,” she says. “But I don’t think that’s the kind of job he’s looking for.”

Update: Cohen is misinformed when he says Smith inflated his title. Smith did not. Goldman Sachs uses the title “executive director” in its London office to mean the same level as “vice president” in the U.S.

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You indicate above that you cover “every aspect of leadership.” The courage to be the lone conspicuous dissenter in a toxic professional culture, I think you’d agree, is a mark of strong leadership. I personally would be deeply suspicious of any leader within my organization who marched lock step behind me if I blindly implemented a poor idea, or fostered a culture that could potentially be my undoing.

I understand that “it’s easier to go Buddhist after you’ve made your first million,” and that maybe Mr. Smith’s indictment is disingenuous, given his time there and ostensible personal success, but in what world do we advocate silence to the end of professional preservation in the face of some as binarily evil as Goldman Sachs? Are we training an army of professionals who believe in nothing, will say nothing, and will merely use an “opportunity cost slide-rule” to determine what they will, and will not tolerate.

just as an aside… I find your comment “it’s easier to ‘go Buddhist’ after you’ve make your first million” to be a caricature that I can charitably ascribe to ignorance. Let me assure you that Buddhism has very little to do with the Street, despite the plethora of self-proclaimed “gurus”, “ninjas” and “ronin”….

really? the guy writes a piece about the lack of integrity, the death of vision, and the calamity of leadership at his (former) place of employment and you are concerned about his metaphorical “career suicide”. isn’t that like telling a girl who leaves her loser boyfriend or husband: “now who will take you?”

Greg Smith did the bravest thing a person can do: stand down the establishment. Trying to get out of a hierarchy is like trying to get out of the Mafia. I suspect that Greg is living according to his deepest values and not the values of the collective. We call these heroes. Greg is on the hero’s journey. Go Greg!!!!

“An even bigger issue, says Cohen: When Smith detailed how Goldman employees “callously … talk about ripping their clients off,” he put the livelihoods of the 30,000 people employed by the firm at risk.”

I wonder where Mr. Cohen learned his business ethics (an oxymoron, if I ever saw one).

I’m sure a vast majority of us don’t have ANY questions about Mr. Smith’s ethics or loyalty. However, in the cesspool that’s Wall Street (and much of American capitalism) a thief’s honor must be adhered to, that’s true.

And as for the “bigger issue”, if a business maximizes its profits by ripping off its clients, it doesn’t deserve to exist.

Ask these Wall Street types, what is it that you do that makes you deserving of such richesl, or even a basic sallary? Nothing! You move money around, you play casino games, you run Ponzi schemes, you find suckers and play them for all they’re worth. You facilitate markets that nobody needs to lead happy and productive lives, except the so-called investors, hoping to get something for nothing. You don’t save lives, yet your “anaylsts” make three times more than my pediatrician.

Wall Street is a parasite on the body of this country, and many would say it’s an outright criminal enterprise. It’s the proverbial tarantula on the back of the frog that’s agreed to take him to the opposite bank of the river. What a colossal waste of human and financial resources! Who was it who said something about the fundamental efficiency and democratic inclination of market capitalism? Oh, I remember, my economics professor, in the late 1970s.

Greg Smith did the bravest thing any of us can do: he stood down the establishment. Getting out of a hierarchy is like getting out of the Mafia (evidently). It’s extremely dangerous not to conform to the norm, and to follow one’s one deepest values. I call these folks heroes. Greg is on the hero’s journey. Go Greg!!!

REALLY! Using a source who worked for Goldman placing castoffs. I’m sure he is unbiased. I work in the industry and wish i had the character. Most individuals in the business are applauding this man for listening to his conscience. Even in this article, a fluff piece for Goldman, they are disparaging his lack of title or advancement. Wall Street needs to WAKE UP.